Saturday, March 16, 2013

Kris Kobach, the secretary of state of Kansas, has released some very interesting statistics
that disprove — once again — the fallacious claims made by critics of
voter ID. Kansas, whose voter-ID law became effective this year, has 1.8
million registered voters. From January 1 through September 30, only
120 people in the entire state applied for the free ID that Kansas
provides to anyone who doesn’t already have a photo ID.

Those 120 constitute only 0.007 percent of all voters registered in Kansas.

On Election Day, only 0.07 percent of the 1,182,771 Kansans turning
out at the polls were unable to show a proper form of identification.
They were allowed to cast provisional ballots and told to present a
valid ID after the election so that their vote would be counted. Almost
half of the provisional voters did so, dropping the number of voters
without proper ID to just 0.04 percent of all people who tried to cast
votes.

These figures give the lie to claims by the Brennan Center and other
voter ID opponents that a whopping 11 percent of voting-age Americans
have no acceptable form of photo ID, and that voter-ID laws therefore
present a hindrance for many.

In an election where turnout across the country generally went down
from 2008, Kansas had a turnout of 66.8 percent. That’s virtually the
same as the turnout in 2000 (66.7 percent) — the last presidential
election year in which Kansas had no U.S. Senate race. Sorry, Brennan
Center. Your claim that voter ID laws reduce turnout goes up in smoke.
Again.

Thursday, March 14, 2013

The death of Obamacare was prolonged Wednesday
when Congress approved legislation to fund the government through the 2013
Fiscal Year. By settling for minor cuts to spending, Republican House leadership
effectively allowed the opportunity to end Obamacare to slip through their
hands.

In January, hoping to buy time to shore up
Obamacare's Achilles Heel, the Obama administration waived the deadline for
states to establish exchanges.

When Rep. Nancy Pelosi stated, "We will have
to pass it [Obamacare] to see what is in it", she had no idea the fatal flaw she
was ignoring. Obamacare was crafted in such a way, that its funding is
completely dependent on the states to establish exchanges. If a state refuses to
set up an exchange, and so far 25 have refused, the federal government must step
in and create one. However, the law does not authorize tax credits and subsidies
to flow through federally created exchanges, only those created by states.
Furthermore, there is reason to doubt that the federal government has either the
ability or the money to implement the exchanges themselves. To date, congress
has not appropriated any funding for this purpose. Unfortunately, today marked a
missed opportunity for Republican leadership to take advantage of this flaw.

Fortunately, we have one last opportunity to
get it right, before Obamacare takes full and irreversible effect in 2014.
Current government funding expires on September 30, 2013. Congress will be under
immense pressure to pass a budget or another continuing resolution (CR) to avoid
a government shutdown. This will be our one and final chance to take down
Obamacare. Conservatives must stick together and refuse to approve any budget or
CR that does not completely defund Obamacare (including the exchanges, Medicaid
expansion, etc.). It would also be an appropriate time to repeal the attack on
religious liberty.

Now
is the time to see what kind of political courage our Republican leadership has.
We have heard plenty of rhetoric surrounding priorities and promises to take
Obamacare down. Will our leaders walk the walk, or just keep talking?

(Note:
Any attempt to unilaterally rewrite the law to fix these flaws would certainly
end up before the Supreme Court. Perhaps next time they will get it
right.)

If
you do only ONE thing to help your country this year, I encourage you to contact
your reps and demand that they do not pass a CR that does not sufficiently
defund Obamacare and all of its provisions.